Nolan's career worst day? Against the Pats

Mike Nolan has coached 25 years in the NFL so he's seen a lot of games come and go and his defenses have given up yards and stolen yardage from offenses. But he's never seen a day like the season-opener this year when the New England Patriots piled up 622 yards on the Dolphins defense that Nolan coordinates.

"It humbles you, I would say that," Nolan said Wednesday. "And that's a good thing in the long run but you just wish you could learn humility without having to go through that. And that's not the first time. I've been at it long enough so I've had some other bad days, too. That was, without question, the worst. But like I said, humility is not a bad thing. You just want to learn the lesson once and hopefully that's it."

Note Nolan didn't say the September opener was one of the worst game for him. Note he didn't say it was among the worst. he said that was the worst.

"That was the worst game game, sure," Nolan said when I asked to make sure I understood his meaning.

Worst for him?

"Oh, yeah," he said.

Ever?

"Oh, yeah," he said. "It doesn't get much worse than that, I can tell you right now. You've got to coach a long time to go through a bad day like that. They put up 600-some yards, guys. You hear about that in college sometimes, but you don't hear about that in the NFL. But again, they had a very good plan and we played poorly and the thing that surprised me more than anything else is about midway through the third quarter it was still a 14-14 game. But then that long pass when they were backed up, again playing poorly, I think the game kind of changed right there."